Wild coal fires are a ‘global catastrophe’

Wild coal fires are a global catastrophe, scientists are warning, burning hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal every year and contributing to climate change and damaging human health.

These fires can rage both above and below ground and may contribute more than three per cent of the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, which are thought to be causing global warming.

Scientists note that if coal-producing countries could tackle the infernos, it might be a cost-effective way to meet their targets under the Kyoto protocol, drawn up to cut the emission of greenhouse gases.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all to say it’s a global catastrophe,” says Glenn Stracher, a US geologist at East Georgia College, Swainsboro. As well as releasing carbon dioxide, “the fires cause human suffering – respiratory, skin diseases, increases in heart problems and asthmatic conditions. They are responsible for a lot of illnesses”.

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“Estimates for the carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere from underground fires in China are equivalent to the emissions from all motor vehicles in the US,” Stracher told delegates at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Denver.

The fires also release noxious chemicals into the air which condense to contaminate soil and water with substances like mercury, selenium and sulphides, according to research by Stracher, to be published in the International Journal of Coal Geology.

Forest fires

Coal fires occur wherever there is coal, but major fires blaze in Indonesia, China, India and the US. Alfred Whitehouse, of the Office of Surface Mining in Jakarta, Indonesia, says there may be up to 1000 fires blazing underground in that country alone.

Underground fires can be particularly dangerous as they can burn for decades and ignite forest fires in times of drought. Surface fires tend to be doused eventually by rains, but underground fires burn until they exhaust the coal or hit the water table, he said.

Indonesia has been plagued with coal fires for two decades, ever since a drought induced by the weather phenomenon El Niño in 1982. Whitehouse said his office had managed to quell 106 of the 263 fires they had identified by digging the fires out.

Although coal seam fires have occurred spontaneously far back into geological history, they are much more common now. Mining activities like welding, using explosives, or miners simply discarding cigarette butts can ignite them. “It’s almost always someone’s hand,” said Whitehouse, adding that 63 fires are currently being monitored in the US.

Smothering grout

Stracher’s research suggests coal wildfires in China burn 200 million tonnes a year, equivalent to about 20 per cent of the total used by the US for power generation.

Paul van Dijk, of the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in the Netherlands says the ITC is currently working with the Chinese government to use satellite remote sensing technology to detect and monitor underground coal fires in China. Mining engineer Gary Colaizzi told the conference his company, Goodson and Associates, has invented a heat-resistant grout that smothers the coal fires. It is made of sand, fly ash, cement, water and foam and has the consistency of shaving foam.